The Keminaissance will be delayed. For nearly a year, Conservative optimists and a clutch of supportive pundits have been forecasting an upturn in the fortunes of Kemi Badenoch, confident that her party will emerge from the crater it fell into in 2024, overtake Reform UK to become once again the main party of the right and, who knows, maybe, with a following wind, even push Labour aside and return to government. Every sign of strength from the Tory leader – a robust conference speech here, a viral clip on social media there – has been hailed as evidence of the coming Keminaissance. On the evidence of the past week or so, we will have to wait a little longer.
It’s quite true that Badenoch’s personal ratings are better than those of her party. True, too, that she ended a long losing streak when the Tories won a Westminster seat at the Aberdeen South byelection in June. But there is a more recent election result that should temper the boosters’ enthusiasm, along with a series of decisions that confirm that, when it comes to both strategy and judgment, Badenoch is badly lacking.
Start with that contest from a week ago. For many, the standout fact of the byelection to replace Andy Burnham as mayor of Greater Manchester was that Reform came a very poor second, taking just 21% of the vote to Labour’s 47%. It was indeed a crushing defeat for Nigel Farage’s party, which a matter of weeks earlier had talked up its chances of winning the mayoralty.
But run your finger further down the vote tally until it finally reaches the Conservative candidate on a mere 7.7%. In all the previous mayoral contests in Greater Manchester, the Tories were in second place. This time they were fifth, behind Restore Britain, a party of the hard right that has become home to all manner of racists and white supremacists.
A Tory result that bad among such a large electorate suggests not merely that Badenoch is making slow progress, but that she is moving her party backwards. When it comes to challenging Labour, other parties are either level with the Conservatives or ahead of them. In that context, it seems an undeserved compliment to call Kemi Badenoch the leader of the opposition.
Her strategic response to this competition on the right has been to move towards her rivals, hoping to blunt the appeal of the nationalist populist parties by matching their offer. The latest step came late on Thursday with, as the Telegraph billed it, a Tory “promise to end council housing for foreigners”. Badenoch’s pledge is to evict almost 230,000 non-EU foreign national households from their homes.
Never mind that many of those turfed out will include people who, while not UK citizens, have been living, working and paying taxes in Britain for years, while others will be refugees fleeing war and persecution. Never mind that, once evicted, those families, including their children, will be rendered homeless, leaving local councils with the choice of either abandoning them to the streets or providing (much costlier) emergency accommodation. Never mind that it’s unclear who exactly would identify and locate these families, unless Badenoch plans to create a British equivalent of ICE, mounting raids, snatching terrified people from their cars and throwing them into detention. Never mind all that; Badenoch doesn’t care.
So much for the policy; now consider the timing. The Tory leader decided the right moment to demand foreigners be kicked out of their homes was as the Norfolk town of Thetford entered its third night of violence and disorder, triggered by a mob surrounding the accommodation of suspected asylum seekers, some in the crowd trying to force their way in, as others threw rocks and chanted: “We want them out.” Into this tinderbox of a situation walked the Conservative party leader, clutching a petrol can.
Just a day or two earlier, she had been defending the selection as a Somerset council candidate of Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a man who has served long jail sentences for, among other things, a sustained campaign of antisemitic harassment and abuse of the Jewish former MP Luciana Berger, a campaign that saw Berger branded an “evil money-grabber”, her face superimposed on the body of a rat and photographs of her doctored into multiple, sexualised images.
Badenoch argued that Bonehill-Paine had renounced his past as a self-described “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights” and now works to prevent others succumbing to what he calls the disease of antisemitism. In April, he published a lengthy account of how he had come to see Jews as the malign, all-powerful “force operating behind events”, a text that contains some useful insights. (Among them, as my colleague Rafael Behr has pointed out, is an arresting admission by Bonehill-Paine that, though then a full-strength neo-Nazi, he “welcomed Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader”, which should give pause to those who, at the time, so adamantly dismissed Jewish fears that Corbyn was a draw to those who hate Jews.)
Though candid, the essay is not wholly reassuring. For one thing, it contains no apology to Berger or any of Bonehill-Paine’s other victims. For another, he explains that what changed him was reading the Bible and coming to realise that Jews are “God’s chosen people”. I suspect few Jews will find comfort in that. Instead, they will worry that the would-be politician has traded antisemitism for philosemitism, which means he still singles out “the Jews” rather than seeing Jews as regular people, with the right to be as ordinary and flawed as anyone else.
Still, even if Bonehill-Paine’s disavowal of his past were wholly convincing and he should be regarded as fully rehabilitated, that doesn’t make it obvious that he is acceptable for public office. The bar for that is higher, a point Badenoch herself implicitly conceded when she hinted that Bonehill-Paine would not have cleared the threshold to become an MP. Serving as a councillor was different, she explained, as he would be responsible for nothing more than “parking and bins” – thereby, and at a stroke, insulting the many thousands of Conservatives who devote themselves to public service in their local communities.
after newsletter promotion
Bonehill-Paine eventually withdrew his candidacy, but that did not draw a line under the episode. In her stubbornness, the Tory leader said the former neo-Nazi would now serve the party as an adviser, thereby giving him a role on the very national level she had earlier said was off-limits. Worsening matters still further, the shadow cabinet member Claire Coutinho posted that, while, “Luciana and others are unable to forgive Joshua, I do,” attributing this vicarious generosity of hers to her Catholic faith, and so, doubtless unconsciously, reinforcing that age-old trope of the forgiving Christian and the vengeful Jew.
What a mess to have made in just a few days. If it were only tactical blunders and in-the-moment misjudgments, one might be more, er, forgiving. But the flaw is strategic. Badenoch has chosen to fight a race to the bottom against Reform, but it is a race she can never win. Farage will always be willing to go further. Take that latest proposal on housing. She would give foreign nationals six months to get out of their homes; Reform promises to boot them out in three. The penny has still not dropped that in a contest of Reform v Reform Lite, the real thing will always have the edge.
All the while, as Badenoch chases after Farage supporters, moderate Tory voters grow more disenchanted. There may be room for ex-fascists in Conservative ranks, but the leader will allow no place for Conservatives who support net zero targets and do not want the UK to leave the European convention on human rights. The result is that those “blue wall”, southern Tories who defected to the Lib Dems in 2024 have every reason not to come back.
So, yes, Kemi Badenoch may score a win now and then; she’s bound to land the odd blow on Burnham when normal hostilities resume in September. But a Keminaissance? For the Tories, it looks like the dark ages have a while to run yet.
-
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
-
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
